Ponzi Empires, thieving saints, and maybe a little too much information about skin grafts.

All that and more on today's bonus episode of Our Fake History.

Roll the bonus theme.

Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major, and normally, this is the podcast where we explore historical myths and try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story that it simply must be told.

But on these bonus episodes, I like to take questions from the listeners and I do my best to answer them.

If you've been following the podcast, then you know that we just completed a series on the infamous 1920s con man, Charles Ponzi. Now, long before I started this podcast,

I had a distaste for liars and propagandists, and my feelings certainly have not changed over the years.

Despite doing bi-weekly ruminations on the slippery nature of truth,

I've found myself more deeply committed to the idea that there needs to be some sort of objective truth that we can all agree on.

Lies have consequences, and it's more important than ever that people are able to use their critical faculties to parse this world of misinformation and propaganda that we live in.

But with that said, I still can't help but be a little charmed by some of these historical con artists that I explore on the show.

Figures like Heinrich Schliemann, Matahari, George

Salmanazer, and now Charles Ponzi, all have something about them that makes me smile.

When these con artists are successful, it's because they are so brazen.

And that brazenness is kind of funny.

I'm starting to realize that there is a silliness to all con artists.

And that silliness makes them weirdly attractive. It actually helps their con.

At the height of his success, Ponzi was a carnival mirror reflection of a successful person.

Now, you would think that that would make people more skeptical of him.

And in some cases, it did.

You know, all of these con artists always have their naysayers.

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